Home- Grown History His West End House Sits On Historic Earth

October 13, 1985|by FRANK WHELAN, The Morning Call

Allentown's West End would seem an unlikely place for an archaeological dig. There are no ancient tombs covered with arcane hieroglyphics. Tree-lined streets rather than broiling sands greet the visitor. And most of the buildings date from the era of Calvin Coolidge or Dwight Eisenhower not Tutankhamen. Indiana Jones would seemingly find nothing to detain him here.

But to someone with Kurt Zwikl's interest in local history the treasure of west end Allentown is in his own front yard. "See these stones," he says pointing to a group of otherwise undistinguished rocks. "They once served as the border along the old road to Fogelsville. It ran right past this house." The house that the former state representative is talking about is his own. Its white-painted brick and simple Federal lines blend in so well with the trees that a visitor to the house would be hard-pressed to distinguish it from many others.

For Kurt Zwikl, however, this ordinary-appearing house is extraordinary. "From the first time I saw it I knew I wanted to own it." After a visit, he told the previous owners, "If you ever decide to sell it give me a call." What makes the house unique to Zwikl is its history. After researching deed records and seeking the expert opinion of architect Ben Walberthe believes the house is one of the oldest surviving structures in the West End. He looked at everything including the type of screws used, "Before 1846 the ends were flat," says Zwikl; "After that they were made with points." From the color of the paint he has been able to draw some conclusions about the building's past. "It has some things that only can be found in a house built in the 1850s," he says, "yet there are other reasons to believe the house was built in the 1830s."

Whenever it was that the house began its life there is no doubt that it was well back in the 19th century. In that era, life in Lehigh County still moved at the speed of a fast-paced horse. Railroads were a Johnny-come-lately, and although iron and coal were bringing the Industrial Revolution to some parts of the region it was still farming and the rural life that dominated the territory west of 15th Street. And it was Pennsylvania Germans who farmed that land.

The house has been closely associated with two families in its over 100- year existence. It was Joseph Reichard and his family who first lived on the property from 1855 to 1901, and from 1901 to the 1920s the property belonged to Edwin Lichtenwalner and his son Edwin F. No one knows for sure when the house was built. But Kurt Zwikl has found a reference to it as far back as 1862. "It is on a map from that date, so we know that the house was there then," he says.

The first known photograph of the house was taken in 1901. It was that year that the house became the property of Edwin Lichtenwalner. The house did not have any paint then and its red brick front is similar to any number of comfortable farm dwellings of the period.

It was Edwin Lichtenwalner's son Edwin F., who farmed the property from the 1900s to the 1920s. Together with his wife and sons they lived asfarm families had lived for many years. But change was taking place all around them. The City of Allentown was expending to the west. Electric streetcar lines had replaced horses at the turn of the century and with it the growth of what urbanologists call the streetcar suburb. The major impact came to west Allentown with the arrival of the automobile.

Zwikl has chronicled this change in the life of his house by putting together a series of slides. Culled from turn-of-the-century Muhlenberg College yearbooks and other sources it shows a gradual encroachment of the city on the farm. Things really began to take off in the 1920s, after the slow growth at the beginning of the century. As housing developers began to nibble at the edge of one farm after another the transformation of the West End was taking place.

According to Zwikl, it was in 1923 that developer Charles Kaeppel set his eye on the Lichtenwalner's property. It was a piece of prime real estate and Kaeppel liked the house so much he used the place as his own home. At the same time he was also building homes for others. By 1930, when the Great Depression put an end to most residential building, the changes to the city's West End were set. With improved roads and automobiles it had become a suburb, its old way of life forgotten by all but the few people who lived there.

But Zwikl's curiosity about his property refused to let these things remain in the past. In the fall of 1984, he contacted Hope Luhman, a part-time lecturer in archaeology at Muhlenberg College. As a graduate student pursuing her Ph.D. in historical archaeology at Bryn Mawr College, Luhman felt that Zwikl's house might have potential. "What interested me at first about the site," said Luhman, "was when Kurt told me that it was the oldest surviving house on the west end of Allentown."